Customs Bans Importation, Exportation Of All Goods Through Land Borders

The Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) has directed that no item should be imported or exported through the nation’s land borders.

The comptroller-general of the service, Hameed Ali during a press conference in Abuja on Monday saying goods can only enter the country through the air and seaports.

According to him, the exercise is to aid security agencies carry out thorough scanning on goods entering the country in order to certify fit for consumption.

 “We hope that by the time we get to the end of this exercise, we would have agreed with our neighbours on the type of goods that should enter and exit our country,” he said.

“For now, all goods, whether illicit or non-illicit, are banned from going and coming into Nigeria.

“Let me add that for the avoidance of doubt that we included all goods because all goods can equally come through our seaports.

“For that reason, we have deemed it necessary for now that importers of such goods should go through our controlled borders where we have scanners to verify the kind of goods and how healthy to our people can be conducted.”

In response to a breach of citizens’ right to movement and international trade, Ali, noted that security overrules all laws in the country.

“We want our nation, we want to make sure that our people are protected. You must be alive and well for you to begin to ask for your rights. Your rights come when you are well and alive.

“Go and the people in Maiduguri when Boko Haram was harassing their lives, the only question was survival, there is no question of right. This time Nigeria must survive first then before we begin to ask for our rights.”

meanwhile, Niger Republic has banned the exportation of rice to Nigeria, following the closure of the nation’s borders.

Recall that in a move to checkmate smuggling in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari in August shut its borders across the country.

Buhari also added that the closure was to allow the country’s security forces to develop a strategy on how to “stem the dangerous trend and its wider ramifications”.